Mercury Expands Into Consumer Banking With Mercury Personal

Startup-focused banking FinTech Mercury is getting into the consumer banking business.

The company has launched Mercury Personal, designed to help builders in the tech sector optimize their money, according to a Wednesday (April 17) news release.

“Many founders and investors are not happy with their bank accounts today and often need to switch between several platforms to access a full suite of services,” Alexey Likuev, head of personal banking at Mercury, said in a news release.

“There is a paradox in today’s banking landscape: most neobanks focus on a pretty basic offering aimed at lower-income individuals and the underbanked.”

At the same time, he added, traditional banks offer private banking and wealth management services that involve routine communications with a banker, even if it involves simple tasks like sending a wire transfer.

“Most founders are just looking for a powerful self-service banking option they can use for their personal needs,” Likuev said. “And that is where Mercury Personal comes in.”

According to the release, the offering provides users with high-yield savings accounts, enhanced FDIC insurance and automated money management. Customers can also create multiple checking and savings accounts according to their financial goals, and send “no-fee wires, ACH transfers and checks without the need to talk to a banker.”

PYMNTS examined the changing role in banking in a recent conversation with Shaunt Sarkissian, founder/CEO of AI-ID, who spoke with PYMNTS for the “What’s Next in Payments Series: What Is a Bank — the Changing Landscape of Banking and Financial Services.”

“Banks still play the role they’ve always played, but as we become digital, as we become mobile and as the banks become branchless, the relationship becomes centered in the technology and the capabilities — not always the individuals, the bankers that knew you,” he said.

As that report noted, banks have traditionally been characterized by their brick-and-mortar presence. Sarkissian said that although the nature of banking interactions has evolved, the trust that customers place in their banks is still the same.

All the same, technology now lets customers manage their finances online — and often from mobile devices and apps — reducing the need for physical branch visits.

“It used to be that mobile was viewed as one of many form factors, and people would primarily access their banking services via the web … but mobile has become the de facto bank interface for the vast majority of consumers and businesses,” Sarkissian said.